About That Big Regulatory Rollback ...
What the Trump administration has achieved so far is not so much deregulation as regulatory stasis. Which isn’t all bad.
Paper trail.
Photographer: Al Drago/Bloomberg
Rolling back regulations was supposed to be a major priority for President Donald Trump, and members of his administration claim that this rollback is well underway and boosting the economy. “Particularly in 2017, the deregulation started everywhere across the board,” National Economic Council Director Larry Kudlow said in October. “I think that started this push and started the small-business push and the blue-collar hiring.”
Is this true? Well, one piece of evidence that can be (and has been) cited as evidence of an across-the-board regulatory rollback is the annual tally of pages in the Federal Register, the daily publication of government regulations, proposed regulations and other notices. It was recently updated by the Regulatory Studies Center at George Washington University to incorporate 2018: